LA Global Institute Change management guide · By LA Strategy Institute · Published October 19, 2026 · Updated October 19, 2026
A change impact assessment rates, group by group, how much a decided change alters people's processes, systems, roles, skills, behaviours, measures, pay, and workload. This guide gives the ten dimensions, a five-step method, a rating scale, an impact grid that runs in the browser, and a worked example for a CRM rollout.
Short answers
It compares how each affected group works today with how it will work after the change, rates the size of the difference on each dimension, and points the support at the groups that carry the most. It does not decide whether the change is right; it starts once that decision is made.
Once the change is decided and can be written in one sentence, and before the plan, the training, and the announcement are fixed. The University of Exeter's change blueprint places it early, alongside defining the future state and the stakeholder analysis.
A change lead or project lead drafts it, but the ratings come from the people who know the work: process experts and the people who will use the new way of working, from every affected group. The senior representatives of those groups should see the questions before the assessment starts.
There is no standard duration. The work grows with the number of affected groups: each group needs at least one interview or workshop to rate the change, and a second conversation to confirm the ratings with people from that group.
A rating of every affected group against every impact dimension, a heat map of where the change lands hardest, a note of risks the groups raised, and one owner and one action for every high impact. Those outputs feed the change strategy, the change management plan, and the communication plan.
Ten dimensions
The list combines two public frameworks. Prosci's 10 aspects of change impact are processes, systems, tools, job roles, critical behaviors, mindsets, attitudes and beliefs, reporting structure, performance reviews, compensation, and location (Prosci, Defining Change Impact). The University of Exeter's change blueprint adds skills, responsibility, and workload and wellbeing (Exeter, Change impact assessment). Here, systems and tools share a row, as do behaviours and mindset.
Do the steps this group follows to get its work done change?
Does this group work in a new or different system, application, or tool?
Does what this group is accountable for grow, shrink, or move to someone else?
Must this group learn something it cannot do today?
Must this group act differently, or let go of a belief about how the work should be done?
Does who this group reports to, or works most closely with, change?
Is this group judged on different targets, or reviewed in a different way?
Do commission, bonus, grade, or recognition change for this group?
Does where, when, or for how many hours this group works change?
Does this group carry extra work during the transition, or lose control over how it works?
The method
Frameworks name what to look at. The steps below are the order to do it in, so the assessment ends with decisions rather than a list of observations.
Name what stops, what starts, for whom, and on what date. A new CRM is a project name; sales reps log every customer call in the CRM instead of the shared spreadsheet from March 2 is a change you can assess.
Include every role, team, customer, or partner whose working day changes. Use the names the organization uses for them, not department codes, and split a department when its parts are affected differently.
Walk each group through how the work is done today and how it will be done after the change, then rate every dimension None, Low, Medium, or High. Note whether each impact will feel supportive or disruptive to that group.
Read the heat map two ways. Down a column, the group with the most high ratings carries the most change. Across a row, a dimension that is high for several groups needs one owner across all of them.
For each high rating, name one owner, one action, and one date before the change is announced. The actions can include change leadership development, a change network, targeted communication, training, organization design, resistance management, or a pilot that lets the group try the new way of working first.
Rating scale and evidence
The high, medium, and low criteria below follow the University of Exeter's change blueprint, with None added so an untouched dimension is recorded rather than left blank. How you gather the ratings matters as much as the scale.
A large shift in what the group does, is responsible for, or must know. Extensive process or system changes, real behaviour change, changed working relationships, or a complicated rollout.
Some process, system, or behaviour change. Responsibilities and relationships shift in part, and the dependencies between groups need managing.
Minor process or system changes, no behaviour change required, and few dependencies on other groups.
This part of the group's working day is untouched by the change. Record it anyway, so a blank is never mistaken for a rating nobody made.
Take more time per person but give the best insight. Best when only a few groups are affected.
Take less time than interviews, but it is harder to get the right people in the room. Best for a wider set of affected groups.
Reach very large groups, but answers are often thin. Best as a supplement to workshops and interviews, not a substitute.
The impact grid
Four groups, ten dimensions. Choose a group, rate each dimension None, Low, Medium, or High, then move to the next group. The heat map shows where the change lands hardest. Write the real group names on the printed copy; nothing you select here is saved or sent.
Worked example
An illustrative company replaces shared spreadsheets and emailed order forms with one CRM for sales, service, and billing. This is a teaching example, not a client case. Load it into the impact grid to see the same heat map there.
| Dimension | Sales reps | Service agents | Finance and billing | Sales managers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Processes | H | M | H | M |
| Systems and tools | H | H | M | M |
| Job role and responsibilities | M | L | L | H |
| Skills and knowledge | M | M | L | M |
| Behaviours and mindset | H | M | L | H |
| Reporting lines | – | – | – | L |
| Performance measures | H | M | L | H |
| Pay and recognition | M | – | – | L |
| Location and working pattern | – | – | – | – |
| Workload and wellbeing | M | H | M | M |
Four highs: the steps for logging a deal, the system they log it in, the habit of keeping notes in personal spreadsheets, and the activity targets they are now measured on. They carry the most change, so they get the first owner and the first training slot.
Three highs: their role shifts from collecting forecasts to coaching from the pipeline report, they must trust system data over their own spreadsheets, and their reviews move to the same pipeline measures.
Two highs: a new system for case records and a heavy workload during the cut-over, when the old and new systems both need attention. Workload is rated on its own because the cut-over adds work even where the job itself does not change.
One high: invoices are raised from closed orders in the CRM instead of from emailed order forms. One high is still a high; it gets its own owner rather than being folded into the sales training.
Three assessments that get confused
The names overlap and the templates online blur them further. Run the impact assessment first, carry its results into the readiness assessment, and keep the business impact analysis for continuity planning.
Maps what a decided change will do to each group's working day: processes, systems, roles, skills, behaviours, structure, measures, pay, location, and workload. This page.
Asks whether the organization is prepared to carry that change on a specific date, including sponsorship, capacity, skills, and measurement. Impact results feed its third dimension, affected people and impact.
A continuity planning tool. It predicts the operational and financial consequences of a disruption, such as a building, system, or supplier failure, and gathers what is needed to plan the recovery. It is about disruption, not a planned change.
Summarized from the U.S. government's Ready.gov guidance on business impact analysis. After the impact grid, score the same change with the change readiness assessment: its third dimension, affected people and impact, asks whether the work on this page has been done.
Source boundary
Prosci's article Defining Change Impact, by Tim Creasey, supplied the ten aspects of change impact that most of the dimensions come from. The University of Exeter's Change Blueprint supplied the timing, the participants, the choice between interviews, workshops, and surveys, the high, medium, and low criteria, the heat map, and the list of change interventions. Ready.gov, the U.S. government's preparedness site, supplied the description of a business impact analysis. The five steps, the grid, the weighting used to rank groups, and the CRM example are LA Strategy Institute's own. None of those authors or organizations created, reviewed, or endorsed this page.
Questions change leads ask
A change impact assessment is a structured look at what a decided change will do to the people who must work with it. For each affected group it rates how much the change alters their processes, systems and tools, role, skills, behaviours, reporting lines, performance measures, pay, location, and workload, for example as high, medium, low, or none. The result shows which groups carry the most change and where support has to go before the change is announced.
In practice, yes. Change practitioners use change impact assessment and change impact analysis for the same work: comparing how a group works today with how it will work after the change, and rating the size of the difference. This page treats the two names as one.
Prosci's 10 aspects of change impact are processes, systems, tools, job roles, critical behaviors, mindsets, attitudes and beliefs, reporting structure, performance reviews, compensation, and location. Prosci uses them to translate an organization-wide change into what changes in an individual's job. The grid on this page merges systems with tools and behaviors with mindsets, and adds skills and workload from the University of Exeter's change blueprint.
Early, once the change is decided and can be described precisely, and before the change plan, training, and communication are fixed. The University of Exeter's change blueprint places it in the diagnose phase, alongside the future state definition and the stakeholder analysis. Repeat it when the scope, the date, or the affected groups change.
A change or project lead can run it, but the ratings should come from functional and process experts and from the people who will use the new way of working in every affected group. Validating the ratings with each group matters as much as the first draft, because it also shows how each group is likely to react.
High means a large shift in what the group does, owns, or must know: extensive process or system change, real behaviour change, or changed working relationships. Medium means some of those shifts with dependencies to manage. Low means minor process or system changes and no behaviour change required. Rate each group separately, because the same change can be high for one group and low for another.
The impact grid on this page works as one, with no download, sign-up, or account. Rate up to four groups across ten dimensions, read the heat map, and print the result. It is not offered as a file because a grid filled in once by a project office, without the affected groups, measures the planner's assumptions rather than the impact.
Each high impact becomes a change intervention with an owner and a date: change leadership development, a change network, targeted communication, training, organization design, culture and behaviour work, resistance management, or a pilot. The University of Exeter's change blueprint has the finished assessment reviewed and signed off by the change governance, and the interventions become the core of the change strategy and the change management plan. Then score readiness for the same change.
A business impact analysis is a continuity planning tool: it predicts the operational and financial consequences of a disruption, such as a site, system, or supplier failure, and ranks which functions to restore first. A change impact assessment looks at a planned change and what it does to people's daily work. One plans for something going wrong; the other plans for something being changed on purpose.